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Philip Lester
Philip Michael "Phil" Lester (born 30 January 1987) is a British YouTuber, vlogger and radio personality from Rawtenstall, Lancashire. He is best known for his YouTube channel AmazingPhil. Together with frequent collaborator Dan Howell, Lester presented Sunday night entertainment show Dan and Phil on BBC Radio 1 from January 2013 until August 2014, and since September 2014 has been a monthly host on the station's Internet Takeover slot. Early life Phil was raised in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. Along with older brother Martyn, he attended Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School. He later completed a degree in English Language and Linguistics from the University of York and a post graduate in the Department of Theatre, Film and television, going on to obtain a Master of Arts in Video Postproduction with Specialisation in Visual Effects. Phil has lived with best friend and fellow YouTuber Dan Howell since August 2011, and the pair moved to London together in July 2012. They frequently appear in each other's videos. Career YouTube At age 19, Phil uploaded his first YouYube video on February 2006, entitled "Awaiting the Tide", although this video has since been made private, along with over 100 of his other early videos. The earliest remaining video on his channel—a vlog titled "Phil's Video Blog"—was uploaded on 27 March 2006 on his main YouTube channel, AmazingPhil. It is his third video and first vlog, and was filmed on a black and white camera (which he later said that he won from a cereal box). Since then he has posted over 200 videos on his channel and as of December 2015 has over 3 million subscribers and 281 million video views. He reached 1 million YouTube subscribers on 6 July 2013, 2 million on 29 August 2014 and 3 million on 12 October 2015. Phil's favorite animals are lions; a recurring icon in his early videos is a little stuffed lion (named Lion) in the background. At the end, it's used to show in full view with speech bubble annotations, as if Lion is talking. Later, Phil changed this to a segment called 'Draw Phil Naked' where viewers send in their drawings of him naked but covered somehow that he chooses from and shows at the end of his videos. This segment, however, has ended. Phil is known for being very open to his subscribers about his life and for being encouraging and supporting to his viewers. He is also known to keep his channel as PG rated as possible, and never swears in his videos due to his primarily younger audience. He calls his subscribers Philions. He also once had a pet brine shrimp named Simon, who died on May 3rd, 2011,and was in Phil's videos constantly during the time he was alive. A famous quote from Phil is, "It's a good thing to be strange; normalness leads to sadness." In 2010, Phil and Dan took part in the live, annual 24-hour internet broadcast "Stickaid", a fundraiser for charity UNICEF. Phil has also appeared alongside Dan in Benjamin Cook's twelve part web series Becoming YouTube, and was interviewed on the various topics Cook covered. Phil is also (though the usually uncredited) the creator of the Youtube sensations, "The 7 Second Challenge" (which was soon developed into an app with the help of Dan), the Toilet Tag, and the Tumblr Tag. LessAmazingPhil Phil has a second channel, called "LessAmazingPhil " where he uploads videos that are either too short or too off-topic for his main channel. The channel has over 887,000 subscribers and 19.8 million views, as of December 2015. DanAndPhilGAMES Dan and Phil operate a joint gaming channel titled "DanAndPhilGAMES", where they upload gaming videos. Their first video was uploaded on 12 September 2014. The channel is best known for its Sims 4 series, featuring videos of the two playing Sims 4 and chronicling the life of their Sims character, Dil Howlter. On 8 March 2015 the channel hit 1 million subscribers. It was officially the fastest growing channel on YouTube. DanAndPhilCRAFTS On 1 April 2015, Dan and Phil launched a spin-off crafts-based channel, DanAndPhilCRAFTS, as an April Fools joke. It features a single video of them creating square snowflakes out of paper, with an amateur editing style and humour throughout. It reached over 154,000 subscribers and 500,000 total video views in one week. At Summer in the City 2015, Dan and Phil were presented with a Silver Play Button from YouTube for surpassing 100,000 subscribers on their channel. Fantastic Foursome Phil is part of the famous "Fantastic Foursome", a group of English YouTubers which includes Dan Howell (aka danisnotonfire), Chris Kendall (aka crabstickz), and PJ Liguori (aka KickThePj) The Super Amazing Project In 2011, Dan and Phil created a collaborative YouTube channel through network My Damn Channel. Titled The Super Amazing Project, it featured the duo discussing and investigating paranormal events. Segments included "Viewers Spooky Happenings", where the audience of the show would send in "scary" items for the video bloggers to react to, and "In The News This Week", where the duo recapped recent light-hearted news items and viral videos. In October 2014, it was announced that as of that month Dan and Phil would not carry on working on The Super Amazing Project in order to concentrate on their Radio 1 show. Dan and Phil later announced that the Super Amazing Project would be hosted by new presenters, found by channel owners My Damn Channel. Radio In November 2012, the BBC announced that from January 2013 onwards, Dan and Phil would present the Sunday night entertainment and request show for national UK radio station BBC Radio 1. The duo had occasionally worked with Radio 1 before, making videos for the station's YouTube channel and presenting two Christmas broadcasts. The show was designed to be an interactive, audio-visual broadcast involving music videos made by viewers, physical challenges performed on air by Dan and Phil, and song requests from listeners. It was streamed in video, live on the BBC Radio 1 website, and accessible worldwide. In August 2014, it was announced that the last Dan and Phil show would be broadcast on 24 August, with the duo moving to a different show on Monday nights, featuring other popular video bloggers. This new show was titled The Internet Takeover, and featured Lester alongside Howell live on the first Monday of every month, before coming to an end in April 2016. ''The Amazing Book Is Not on Fire'' and The Amazing Tour Is Not on Fire On 26 March 2015, Dan and Phil announced via a trailer on Dan's channel that they had co-written a book titled The Amazing Book Is Not on Fire. It was released in the UK on 8 October 2015 and worldwide on 15 October 2015, published by Ebury Press and Random House Children's Books. In relation to this, the pair embarked on a virtually sold out tour travelling around the UK during October and November 2015, named "The Amazing Tour Is Not on Fire". On 22 April 2016 they are taking the tour to the US beginning at Playlist Live in Orlando, Florida. The book topped the General Hardbacks Sunday Times Bestsellers list having sold 26,745 copies in the UK in the first week of its release. It also became a #1 New York Times Bestseller in the young adult hardcover list. Other media In 2007, Phil appeared as a contestant on The Weakest Link, placing in second. He also played the role of Tim in 2009 film Faintheart and appeared in a Confused.com advertisement later that year. Phil was interviewed with other internet entertainers on Channel 4 News in October 2012 about the increased popularity of YouTube and video blogging as a profession. Dan and Phil have interviewed One Direction at the 2012 Radio 1 Teen Awards. On 15th April 2013, Dan and Phil interviewed Fall Out Boy in New York City on their comeback tour. They also appeared briefly in the audience on Fuse TV for Fall Out Boy's appearance. In 2013 Dan and Phil appeared on Friday Download, a BAFTA award winning CBBC TV show. Since 2014 Dan and Phil have hosted the worldwide YouTube livestream of the Brit Awards as well as making backstage videos for their channel. In 2015, Dan and Phil, had voice cameo appearances in the UK cinema release of Disney's movie Big Hero 6 as Technician 1 & 2. However, this version is not in the UK home release. That same year, the duo also guest-starred in fellow YouTuber PJ Liguori's online series Oscar's Hotel for Fantastical Creatures, voicing anthropomorphic food items Brie and Rash. Awards and nominations In 2011, Phil won a Guinness World Record for fastest coin stacking, placing 25 coins on top of each other in 31.617 seconds. In 2013, Dan and Phil were voted winners of the Sony Golden Headphones Award, presented by the Sony Radio Academy Awards, for Dan and Phil on BBC Radio 1. In 2014, Dan and Phil were nominated for a Teen Choice Award in the category Choice Web Collaboration for their video "The Photo Booth Challenge". Trivia *He was voted Sugarscape's Hottest Lad of 2013 *Phil is lactose intolerant *One of the mascots from the popular game Crossy Road (called "Emo Goose"), was suggested and voiced by him *His favorite color is blue *His favorite animal is a lion *His favorite Pokemon is Growlithe *He was addicted to Animal Crossing: New Leaf *As a child, he had a fear of horses *His favorite snack/food is popcorn *He and his friend Dan (Danisnotonfire) are huge fans of Muse, and their favorite album by the band is Origin of Symmetry *In 2011, Phil set a Guinness World Record for fastest coin stacking, placing 25 coins on top of each other in 31.617 seconds. *Phil doesn't like any sort of cheese. In his video The Cheese Challenge , in which he tried previous foods he did not like before, he tried 4 different kinds of cheese, only to find out he still hated cheese. *He is the creator of many YouTube challenges, the most notable one being "The 7 Second Challenge", which led to the creation of his and Dan Howell's app, "The 7 Second Challenge". *Phil was featured in asdf movie 9 in the same skit as Dan. *As a child, he didn't like bread crusts because his mother told him that the crusts would make his hair curly. *His mum's name is Katherine (according to DanAndPhilGAMES Overcooked #1 video) *If Phil were a girl, he would have been named Fiona. References Category:People Category:Youtubers